They
by Akihikari
Summary: They can refuse to understand you. They can make you and mar you. They can turn you into a god, and they can forget who you truly were. And they often will.


_They_

oOo

_He who shoulders all our pain_

_Though his struggle will be forgotten,_

_We are still forgiven._

oOo

"Latula, why don't you lead the closing prayer tonight?"

A few heads turn to look at the woman named Latula—still a new face, and one of an unusually high caste for the likes of her fellows—but not many. People are beginning to grow used to her presence at last; quiet in a manner that suggests inexperience at keeping her peace for so long, a distant, distracted sort of warm, and ruthlessly attentive.

Latula rises from her seat and walks to the front of the dingy, cramped room with her customary courtroom gait and, to the surprise of most, gives the gathering a sudden smile. It is too broad, too unexpected, shows too many of her needle-pointed teeth. But when a young boy in the front row catches her eye and returns the smile with no hesitation, her gaze grows significantly less stiff.

"Just as a warning, though", she begins, "I don't have much of a singing voice."

"That doesn't matter", says the woman who called upon her, a wizened old thing with pale green eyes that have lost much of their power. "Do you know, Latula, the Signless once said that he was terrible with music of any sort. It's a wonder he carried this tune so well that we can still sing it after all this time."

She seems on the verge of asking why anyone would have bothered to record him saying such a thing, but substitutes it for a loose shrug at the last moment, offering her the benefit of doubt. "Well, if you say so."

"I do say so", beams the woman. "I once spoke to him myself, after all."

oOo

"We're writing you a song."

Silence falls for a moment, crisp with the newborn campfire; his frown is back—the meaningless crease between the young troll's eyebrows that seems wont to take up residence there almost by default. Then, to her visible relief, it fades as he asks, "You what? Why?"

"Well, it was Rosa's idea, really... You've been tired lately, and... we thought we could at least try to cheer you up...?" She pauses and, on receiving no comment, continues in a rush as though anticipating premature interruption, "It's not even complete, but—but I just thought you might like to know and maybe listen to what we've got so far because we don't even know if you'll like it or not."

"Rosa", seated across them, is ostensibly deep in conversation with the mild-faced troll by her side. At the mention of her name, she turns towards the couple and gives them a quick smile that nobody sees.

"Oh", says the man blankly. With his hood thrown back to reveal his bright red eyes—often wide open, like the eyes of the perpetually hunted, but now drooping with a deep fatigue—and the fire casting his lanky frame into sharp relief, he looks no older than his ten sweeps. "I'm not exactly a musical person, so I'm sure I'll like whatever you've composed."

The girl they call his most devoted Disciple looks across the fire with a nod and on implicit cue, the much older but still beautiful Rosa begins to sing in a language her son does not speak.

_Han bear ey all vor smarte..._

The rhythm is slow, stretching the three lines of the song into a full minute, Rosa's deep alto well-matched by the high, clear voice of the disciple. When they finish, the only sound except for the crackling of fresh logs is a single clap from the man seated next to Rosa. He lowers his hands quickly when the red-eyed one remains silent, seemingly unmoved.

"That dialect", he says at last. "It's not from around here, is it?"

Rosa shakes her head. "Much further up north. It was taught to me by some girls I once worked with; we were easily bored, and liked to exchange bits of culture to pass the time." She sighs and continues, "I haven't had much occasion to use it thus far, though it might come in handy if we ever travel that way."

Her son waves a dismissive hand. "But what do the words mean?"

She tells him, and he shies like a startled hoofbeast, eyes wide again and regaining some of that hunted look. Her noise of surprise dissolves in the still night air as he leans closer to the fire—closer to her, his mother for as long as he can remember—and asks, "Is that really what you think of me?"

When she gives no reply, he looks beseechingly at his disciple. "Is it?"

The girl opens her mouth as though to assure him otherwise, but thinks better of it at the last moment and nods with a defiance that is not lost on her teacher. Her support seems to take the wind out of him altogether; he slumps bonelessly in his seat, head turned to the ground, and lets out a tiny "Oh."

"We do admire you deeply." It's Rosa's companion who speaks now, having overcome his previous embarrassment. "Whether or not it pleases you to know it."

"It doesn't." The man's voice is brittle. "I appreciate the gesture, but for god's sake—and you people above all else should know that I am not a god myself—leave the song as it is."

There is no anger or disgust to be seen in the way he stands, only a sleepy weariness that calls out from the marrow of his bones. "I'm going to take a walk", he says, raising his hood again so his luminously red eyes, his mutant's eyes, are cast into the safety of shadow. "Don't wait up for me."

oOo

"Miss Latula?"

She turns to find the boy from earlier standing behind her, looking rather more diffident than he had during the meeting. "Where will you go now?"

"Home, of course", she replies. "And I have to make it quick if I don't want people asking questions. Would you like to walk with me till the end of your neighborhood?"

He nods with restrained eagerness and scurries to catch up with her long-legged stride. He's a mere stripling, likely no older than five sweeps, if that. But she has seen the color he wears, though it has not yet begun to darken his eyes, and knows that even five sweeps is a long time for a caste where some die as early as fifteen.

"Is it true, what they say?" he demands after a minute's silence.

Latula has no need to ask what he's talking about. "'They' will bandy any rumor worth a gasp in the local watering hole. It's dangerous to believe everything you hear, but yes, I have met the Disciple."

A glance at his face reveals not wonder, however, but confusion.

"No, I wasn't going to ask about that!" he says almost indignantly, as though such questions are beneath him. "I was talking about your glasses."

A cold finger slithers into her chest.

"They say you wear them because you want to be closer to the Sufferer in spirit", the boy continues. "That's why they're red, so you can share his vision. And my friends think it's true, because you're a tealblood and there's no real reason for you to wear red, but—"

"But you shouldn't put words to every question that enters your mind", says Latula brusquely. "It's no business of yours or anyone else's why I wear these glasses. And this is where you leave me, child."

They've reached the outskirts of the lowblood circle and the boy does not need her pointed nod to know that he can go no further. "Okay. Sorry, miss. Get home safely."

"Just Latula is fine", says the woman whom they will one day know as Redglare. "I'm no highblood myself, and have earned no titles yet. What's your name?" she adds, not unkindly.

"Droste Sarayu." A pause, and then he bursts out, "See you next time, Latula."

oOo

The troll with no caste to his blood, no sign for the clan that he does not have—the _s__ignless __one_, they have begun to call him, the _Signless_—does not return to his friends until daybreak, startling his disciple, who remarks worriedly that she would have set out to look for him had he delayed further. He looks at her with wild eyes and calls her by a name that she does not recognize before staggering into the cave.

Two pairs of eyes watch him go; the second, glowing red and blue from the watery shadows, causes the disciple to jump when she sees them at last. "Psionic", she says, with a hint of reproach. "You need to stop doing that."

"I keep forgetting", says the man apologetically as he steps forward into the dawn. Despite not matching his blood, his eyes betray his caste sooner than the clothes he wears, for only a select few of the mustardbloods possess his vision and the powers that accompany it. "Should someone go after him? He's got that look again—you know the one."

"I do." She does.

The signless one is curled up in a corner of the cave when his disciple nears him, resting his chin on steepled fingers as he stares at the opposite wall without really seeing it. He gives no indication that he is aware of her presence until she kneels next to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

Gradually, she feels the tension in his muscles uncoil and his breathing regain a pattern of some sort. Maybe it's the daylight that's begun to creep inside—Rosa will soon drape her heavy green cloak over the entrance as a makeshift curtain, that they may stay up without fear of being blinded by the sun—but his eyes are no longer glowing.

"Would you like to talk about what you saw?" she asks gently.

He exhales audibly and rests his head against the stone wall, and she hears it—he's humming. It's little more than the buzz of a bee in the springtime, but the tune seems to beckon to the back of her mind and the words surface of their own volition, unbidden but astonishing.

_Han bear ey all vor smarte..._

The surprise on her face does not go unnoticed; with just a hint of a smile, he mumbles, "What? It's a nice melody."

"I'm sorry about last night."

"Don't be", he says swiftly. "I said I appreciate the gesture and I do. It just gets hard to take in sometimes, but... that's my problem." He shakes his head like a barkfiend shaking water out of its fur, and when he meets her gaze again, he's fully present. "Something was amiss about me at the time, too. I'm glad I left when I did."

But he is back for now, back in every way, and she is glad for it. At times like these the nearness of him resounds in her chest like a tangible throbbing, a swelling happiness, a river in spate on a stormy morning.

"That name you used for me back there", she says presently, and she neither knows nor cares any more. It's not without a pleasant jolt that she feels a warmth close around her hand as her teacher takes it in his own.

He raises it to his lips and against her trembling fingers he murmurs, "Meulin."

oOo

When Latula's red boots tap on the scrubbed grey tiles of her hive again, the sun has begun to make its determined way above the horizon and her neighborhood is silent, drowsing in the pale dawn. Methodically, she takes care to lock as well as bolt her door, then draws the blinds on every window. She will not leave herself to her thoughts—her secrets—until she has secured the entire hive in this manner.

As she proudly tells anyone who will listen, she is not a highblood and has earned her position and status, meager as it is this early into her career, by her own sweat alone. And yet... when she turns to the bookshelf by her recuperacoon and runs a reverent finger down a very particular spine, it grows hard not to think of the upscale homes that surround her dwelling; of the courtroom that awaits her at work tomorrow, the well-dressed nobles and their casual luxury. And it grows hard not to wonder where her loyalties should lie.

_But in the end,_ she thinks tiredly, stepping out of her clothes and letting her proud posture slump at last, _where they should lie and where they truly lie are two different things._

The book seems to smile at her when she opens it, its painstakingly handwritten words now resembling the voice of a wise old friend. And turning an idle page as she reclines on the edge of her recuperacoon, for one moment—just one, just a hurried little second followed almost immediately by hot shame—Latula allows herself to take its familiar embrace for that of a lover.

_I really must be very tired._

Absently, her hand wanders to her throat, where a certain pendant has hung on a stout silver chain ever since she discovered the significance of the shape it bears.

As always when she finds her thoughts in such disarray, she smiles—not the borderline manic grin that she offered those at the meeting that night, but something soft and somehow private that aches with a yearning she has never fully understood.

_Following his teachings..._

She slides her glasses off her face and places them neatly on her coonside table, blinking at the sudden influx of cooler colors. It is not for long, anyway; the red glasses are the first thing she puts on in the evening, and the last thing to come off at dawn.

_...has never been enough._

It is the closing prayer that weaves through her thoughts as she slips into the recuperacoon entirely, and she grasps at its lulling strains like a lost child reaching for a sanctuary. But her heart knows that her wishes are anything but childlike in their nature. And it wonders.

oOo

"What's that song?"

He jerks back to attention and finds himself having to beat back a scowl at the person who broke into his thoughts; it's one of the younger brood, all large gray eyes and piercing questions. Ordinarily they are his favorite people to talk to. Today they seem too loud, too raw, and more than ever he wishes he were alone.

"I, uh. It's nothing, just a silly little tune that I like." He's been humming it under his breath more frequently with the passing nights, turning it from prayer to lullaby, until its lyrics have lost the oppressive weight of their expectations and are now little more than meaningless sounds from a language he does not know. _"_I'm not much for music, so I'm probably doing it all wrong too", he adds after a moment's pause. Something about the vanity of carrying a song composed in his honor gnaws at him anew.

"Does it have words? Will you teach them to us?" asks the girl with her best gap-toothed smile. "Please?"

"I'm afraid I don't know the words", he lies through his teeth. Foreign tongue or not, the last thing he wants is to spread such blind devotion to him on the lips of children.

"I do!" Both heads swivel towards the disciple, one excited, the other glaring. "Do you want to learn? It's easy, and not very long."

Red eyes tell her clearly, _Do not teach them what it means. Let them learn to sing it, since she asked, but do not teach them what it means. _

Olive ones return grudging agreement, and with that compromise met, his disciple steps forward and gives the scraggly audience a bright look. "We're about to learn a song. You may not understand the lyrics now, but they are special! You would do well to remember them!"

Behind her, the subject of the song groans.

oOo

Droste invites her over to his hive the next time they meet and she declines.

"It would cause your lusus trouble", she says before he can open his mouth in protest. "And I cannot spend too much time getting back to my own neighborhood. I have to appear above reproach for a while longer, and maybe then I can move into a more secluded hive, and have a bit more license to come and go as I please."

He sits heavily beside her on the kerb, unmindful of the dust clouds this kicks up. "Well, if it's inconvenient for you, that's alright. But I don't think you'd trouble my lusus any, seeing as he's been dead for a while now."

Latula looks at him, startled.

"It's fine", he shrugs. "But that's not what I was going to talk about. Shahen wanted me to tell you that you've been singing the closing prayer wrong."

Shahen, the old woman with pale green eyes that appear neither exactly olive nor truly jade, had given her an odd look during the last meeting after she concluded the prayers.

"What do you mean? I've always sung it this way, and I know it's correct to the letter." _I received a written record of it,_ she doesn't say. Keeping the Disciple's scripture hidden in her hive is just another layer of hypocrisy that grows heavier on her shoulders by the night, but a book like that in the wrong hands...

_They would overthrow the current regime, __and they would__establish a second tyranny in its place._

Droste doesn't look convinced. "You sing the first two lines completely different", he insists. "It goes _vor __shlekt ah chilt meh bloo far guh._" Then without warning, he giggles. "Sorry, it just sounds kind of silly when it's spoken like that. No idea what it means. Do you suppose anyone does?"

She knows what her version of the prayer means, of course, but Droste's words are alien to her. "All I know is it's not a local dialect."

"And you sing it like _han bear ey all vor smarte_", he continues. "Still fits and everything, but I swear people were really confused when you started. Where did you even get it from?"

_The better question is, where did _you_ get _your _version from?_ A slight throbbing around the temples tells her the conversation is about to turn a risky corner.

"Nowhere", she says reluctantly. "I must have heard it wrong."

oOo

"Psionic?"

The man turns to give his friend a reproachful look. "You know I have a name, don't you?"

"Yes, and I imagine a day will come when people will have forgotten it", says the signless one baldly. "Just like they will forget mine, my disciple's, and Rosa's." He shrugs and tips his head back to gaze at the open sky overhead. "It's been a long time since we've used our names anyway, even among ourselves."

"So you're just preparing for a future that you know you'll never see?"

A shrug. "Make of it what you will. You objected to me calling you Mituna, anyway." He lets out a snort of irrepressible laughter and ducks just in time to avoid the lightning-tailed stone that comes sailing towards his head.

"Of all names possible, why Mituna?" moans the Psionic. "God, that sounds stupid."

"Can't help it", comes the reply with calculated offhandedness. "It really was your name."

The silence that follows is short but too deep, a bottomless canyon. Then the man whose name was once Mituna begins twirling two pebbles around each other in midair; one burns red in the gray night, the other crackles salty blue. He could not have appeared more uncomfortable had he started twiddling his thumbs.

And he asks, "Were we friends?"

The signless one throws his head back again, and when he straightens up, his hood has fallen away. "I hated you", he says simply.

The stones stop turning and patter harmlessly to the ground.

"We were never close, but there was someone who drove us further apart... But no, that's not it. I allowed myself to hate, and used this person as an excuse."

For a second, the Psionic is visibly bursting with a thousand questions, each more urgent than the last—then his shoulders droop and he's raising the pebbles up again, spinning them faster than ever. "Do you know", he mumbles. "Your song's growing quite popular among the people. I've been hearing it an awful lot lately, it's all over the place."

"I didn't", his friend grouses, "but it doesn't surprise me. Rosa and my disciple have created a monster."

"You say they'll forget Rosa's name, but isn't that her name anyway?" asks the Psionic suddenly. "Rosa? Nobody calls her anything else."

A low laugh is his only answer at first. "That's because nobody knows Rosa's real name. _I_ don't know it and I've been with her all my life. She says she stopped using it so no one would be able to trace her and force her to work in the caverns again, but eh..." He shrugs. "After all this time, I think she's just forgotten it."

"You don't just forget names. Not your own."

"Well, not if you insist on using it all the time", says the signless one with a roll of his red eyes, which seem unusually bright. "Personally, I find the names of others far more memorable than any I have ever been given."

"Do you remember your name, then?"

The question is so soft that its addressee seems to consider pretending that he didn't hear it. Then he says, "Does it matter at all?"

His dying-coal glow is now unmistakeable. The Psionic mumbles an inaudible something and shakes his head, receiving a brittle—almost frightened—smile for his restraint as he drops the pebbles to his feet, then gives them a moody kick.

He's watching them bounce over the cobbled road when he hears it. "Give me five, Latula."

"What?" he says sharply. "Who's Latula?" _And five of what?_

The signless one freezes, his smile dying abruptly away, the light in his eyes following soon after. "No idea", he whispers, and were it not for his face—_he's got that look again, you know the one—_the Psionic would have believed him.

oOo

Latula is not her real name. The name given to her by her formidable lusus as she fought her way out of the caverns lies tucked away in the recesses of her well-organized mind, treated with a casual deference and ready to be brought forward when the need arises—as it does every night in the courtroom—but it remains there quite willingly, as though assured of its unimportance, confident that it will one day be forgotten altogether.

"Latula" is the name that sprang to her lips when she introduced herself to the wild-haired woman she had stumbled across in the forest, the woman with eyes that passed through her twofold like a seamstress' needle and a voice that brought her to her knees quicker than a cracking whip. It remained on her tongue as she rode back home many nights later, trembling with the cold and the last questions she had not been able to ask; when she found the people she had been told to seek, when they asked her who she was, Latula was the name she gave them. And Latula she became to them as well as herself.

So the name that filters through the knocking on her stout front door is a different one, a newer one; so new that it takes her a moment to realize whose it is. "Neophyte Redglare", they have begun to call her now, and it is with quite the glare that she opens her door to find a young woman dressed in the muted grey garb of a messenger.

"Really sorry if I disturbed you, ma'am", she pants, holding out an envelope. "But they said it was urgent."

It is. Latula rips the envelope open with a sharp fingernail and pulls out the heaviest, most official-looking missive she has ever seen. When she finishes scanning the contents, there is nothing to be done but ask the messenger when she's expected to set out.

"They didn't say, but it can't be later than twenty-four hours. I'd start packing if I were you, Miss Redglare."

She nods grimly, trusting her apprehension to stay away from her face. Nonetheless, as she extracts a single note from the wad of bills in her pocket, she can't help but lean closer and mutter furtively, "I'll admit I don't know much about this Marquise Mindfang."

The girl gives her a sickly smile in exchange for the tip. "If you do capture her, ma'am, you'll find out soon enough."

_I'll have to take Pyralsprite,_ she thinks with a sigh.

_Which means nobody will be left to guard this place..._

"Wait!" The girl turns back to her with an inquiring look, and Latula tries to choose her words with care. "If you have no other errands to run, there's something I'd like you to drop off for me."

"How far?" asks the messenger immediately. _Is Shahen an oliveblood or a jadeblood? Her eyes are never fully one or the other. _

With no time to deliberate, Latula says, "The rustblood colony. A boy called Sarayu. ...He's a servant of mine", she adds glibly. Her hopes that Droste will understand what she wants from him are not high, but the more she thinks about it, the better she feels about leaving it with him instead of the doddery Shahen.

_She's been teaching them the wrong prayer, too._

The girl looks far from pleased, but she gives a glum nod. "Got it. I'll be waiting here."

To fish out the spare set of keys to her hive, lock that one bookcase, and slip the key in with the rest is the work of a minute. She then scrawls a hasty note and stuffs both items into a small sealed box—easily broken, but impossible to put together again without the damage being obvious. "You might have to ask around a little to find his hive, but it won't be very deep in", she tells the girl, thrusting it into her waiting hands. "Here's another tip in advance, but mind you, if I find that you have strayed from my orders I will take great pleasure in showing you the wrath of a legislacerator."

"I thought you were only a neophyte", says her messenger cheekily. There was a time when Latula would have found her spirit impertinent; now it gives her a strange pleasure.

"I'm a legislacerator nonetheless. Now get going."

_A legislacerator who's going to have her work cut out for her,_ she thinks as she bolts the door and leans against it, barely registering how hard the wood is against her forehead. _They wouldn't have sent me to find her if they hadn't thought me competent enough, but I am "only a neophyte"..._

_And Marquise Mindfang is a criminal who needs to be brought to justice._

Straightening up again, Latula squares her shoulders. _It's time I showed them what a neophyte is capable of. What Neophyte Redglare is capable of._

Droste flits across her mind and her resolve falters only for a second, wondering how right she is to put her faith in him, how right to prepare as though she might not return.

oOo

"It's going to end, Rosa. I'm sorry."

Rosa's gaze snaps to her son, who is staring resolutely at the ground beneath his shoes as though determined to look anywhere but at her.

"What makes you say that?" she asks, her voice louder and higher than she intended it to be, echoing off the cave walls.

He shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know. It won't be tomorrow or the night after or this month but it's going to end, I can feel it. They'll kill me. They'll—" his breath hitches—"they'll kill me, but I've had it coming all my life and that'll be the end of that. But then—"

"But then?" she prompts gently, when he shows no signs of resuming his sentence. He takes one large gulping breath and turns to look at her with the eyes of a helpless child. "But then I don't know what they'll do to you. To all of you."

She considers telling him not to worry about that, but decides against it. A slender hand reaches for his head and he leans in almost automatically; she strokes his hair like that for some time, weighing her response, trying not to feel the crisp chill that's settled in her chest.

"I don't particularly want to die myself", she says at length. "I hardly think your other friends do either—no one really does, not unless things have grown truly hopeless. But you... you have given hope to those who had none, shown them that there is a way out of the darkest of times. You have won the hearts of so many, and given them back changed for the better... If you were to die, it would be after a life well-lived."

Silence. Her voice is now too soft to fan an echo.

"And if I were to die not long after, I would gladly do so. I think I speak for your dearest disciple and the Psionic too here—you have never liked to hear this, but—we admire you. We _love_ you. The bond that keeps us by your side is too strong to be severed by a mere question of mortality."

He opens his mouth to speak and closes it again, nodding mutely instead. Rosa gives him a smile wider than she would like and stretches her legs out before her. "Come here, son."

"I have a name", he mumbles as he slumps sideways, resting his head on her lap.

"Yes, and a time will come when people will have forgotten it, will it not?" she asks with the ghost of a laugh.

"What—" his eyes are comically wide now. "That _snitch! _He told you!"

"Yes, and I'm glad he did", says Rosa sternly. "I don't see what you're afraid of, if you really think you're in the right."

"So you're saying I should never be afraid if what I'm doing is right?" He rolls onto his back and gazes idly up at her. "That's hard, Porrim."

_Porrim._

"So is everything else", she sighs, "but we've made it anyway."

He seems to give this some thought, but dismisses it with a shrug. "I'm sleepy. Been a while since I heard you sing."

The name dissolves between them like campfire ash in the wind.

"Sleep then, and I'll sing you a better version of the song you ended up liking so much. The people have managed to mangle the words into something that actually makes more sense."

"I never really liked it", he says, closing his eyes in a stubborn gesture. "I just can't get it out of my head. It sticks too easily."

Rosa, who was once Porrim, smiles sincerely this time and replies, "That's the point."

oOo

For the last time, she screams for release; for the last time, her cry goes unheeded.

The sturdy, work-hardened grip of a hundred lowbloods raises her higher now and before she can attempt to twist away, the noose has fallen over her head with the grace of a garland. _No._ The arms are receding now, too late. Every slipping twist of the rope seems to grate between her teeth. _No!_

_No, no, no..._

_What happened? Why is this happening?_

But there is no plea in her eyes as she turns them to the woman who stands in the center of the crowd. "It was fun while it lasted, Neophyte", says Marquise Spinneret Mindfang almost cheerily, even as her good hand seems to reach for the shoulder where there had recently been a healthy arm. "But I don't intend to go down like this. I have things to do and luck on my side."

"Luck?" spits Latula. _"__You brainwashed the __masses, you turned them against the innocent! _I may not be the one to bring you to justice, but it will find you again, Mindfang, and—"

The jerk against her throat takes her unawares, and when she tries to speak again, she cannot.

"And?" says Mindfang, tilting her head. "Didn't quite catch that, dear."

Latula glares at her as the noose tightens and she begins to rise. The rope burns hot against her skin; to her dull dismay, she realizes it is growing hard to breathe like this. _And it will give you what you deserve. _

"It's just my luck that there were so many lowbloods gathered around, you know", says the Marquise with a shrug. "Who knew they wanted to see a hanging so badly? Well, they're certainly getting one."

She looks down with some difficulty to see that the throng, which seems smaller as she is pulled higher, is staring up at her with blank eyes. Yet, it is also growing harder to muster up any anger at them. _This is not about __us__. This is not about them._

_This should be about justice, and justice will find you._

She tries to finger the pendant at her throat, but it is tangled up with the noose. _Justice __will __find us all._

_Han bear ey all vor smarte._

When the closing prayer starts up in her mind, she is thankful. _Justice find us all, _she thinks faintly, her eyes scanning the courtroom as though to look at every unfortunate soul. _Justice find us all._

_I forgive you. It's what he would have done. I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you._

Just before her vision turns to black she sees him—Droste's gray eyes on her from the edge of the crowd, full of the same unquestioning calm that holds the room together, the same blank servility.

And in her last moment, anger crashes through her like she has never felt before.

_I am justice, Marquise Spinneret Mindfang! And I will find you!_

oOo

The last of his fury is spent, and no one seems to think the worse of him for it. Maybe they thought it was a cry of pain. Maybe they knew the truth, and tried to understand.

It somehow gladdens his failing heart to know that they have come together like this, all blood and bloodshed forgotten as he fights for one more breath above them.

_Oh look,_ he thinks hazily, _they're singing._ Rosa was right, this version is better; it makes him feel like less of a dying god and more of a little boy going to bed after a long night. _This song is... changed beyond recognition, revered beyond reason, like history will do with us all._

_Vor shlekt ah chilt..._

oOo

_...all vor smarte..._

"That's not right, Shahen!" someone calls out from the back rows.

"It's how she would have sung it", says Shahen simply. "Let us remember her today. I was not present at the hanging, but she was a good girl and I am sorry we lost her."

The person who objected says nothing in reply.

"Still no sign of that little boy who used to tag along with her?"

"None", says a hardy brownblood in the third row. "He's there, just won't leave the hive. Someone went to see him and said he kept starin' at a bunch of keys. Said, 'I can't even step outta the lowblood circle', or something like that."

"Who keeps keys lying around if they can't find the locks?" mutters Shahen, shaking her head sagely. "Now if there's no further business to attend to, I'm resuming the prayer."

For the last time, the congregation truly sings of the signless one. Only a few of them break down mid-song, and they put it down to grief over losing one of theirs; so young, so full of promise, so angry over what she never deserved.

The Sufferer, they say, would have forgiven them all.

oOo

_Our kin are separated by color of blood_

_We are without love or virtue,_

_And yet, we are forgiven._

oOo


End file.
